


At All Costs

by InTheArmsofaThief



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Canon Divergence, M/M, Magic Stiles, Spark Stiles, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-03 22:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2890076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InTheArmsofaThief/pseuds/InTheArmsofaThief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is sent on a mission in time to protect Derek Hale at all costs. He doesn’t know why Derek Hale is so important to the future, but Stiles takes his mission seriously.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: The Mission

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by ([x](http://baneofawolf.tumblr.com/post/105724248969/derek-hale-must-be-protected-at-all-costs-click))  
> (I wrote the prompt, but the images by [teamsciles](http://alphaasshole.tk/post/98417954639) were the inspiration.)

Derek Hale must be protected at all costs. That is his mission. Stiles stood before his team and the Oracle herself and accepted it.

Stiles didn’t know what Derek Hale’s life meant for the future. Knowing could create bias, and the agency couldn’t risk a personal opinion of the future to affect a mission. Not that it was blind. Stiles wasn’t a fool. The agency had rules.

As the Oracle worked to locate the lynch pin of certain timelines (ones we wanted to avoid at all cost), the mission would then be given to a team of four: three to discuss whether the mission should be followed through with, and one to complete the mission. If the three do not come to a unanimous decision to give the mission to the fourth member, the mission is terminated and the agency lets nature take its course, whichever way that may be.

Very rarely do missions actually take place.

So, when Stiles’s team comes to him with a mission, he knows how gravely important it must truly be. And he trusts his team. Teams are crafted carefully. The three discussers vary widely on opinion of politics. If all three agree that this is the best course of action for the betterment of the world’s present and future, Stiles will gladly take the assignment. Protect Derek Hale at all costs.

The Oracle sat on her throne, sharp eyes focused and intent even as she controlled hundreds of computers around her with just her mind. Stiles had never seen the Oracle outside of public appearances before. Even as an old woman, she exuded power. Her long silver hair was wrapped around her head in a braid and her lips were perfectly painted.

“At last we meet, Spark Stiles.”

Stiles bowed humbly. “Grand Oracle.” He was unsure as to why he was here. Normally the mission Sparks never see the Oracle. His team looked wary too. It didn’t bode well for any of them to see the Oracle after the mission has been established.

“I have called for you,” she said, “because I see all times, have lived all lives. I see your possible paths and must give you one more instruction.”

Stiles nodded, frowning. He wasn’t supposed to know anything. Only his mission.

“It is a unique circumstance, I must admit,” the woman said kindly, “but you will understand. You will meet someone you will want to protect, to keep a close eye on. You must remember that their life and all its downfalls are set in stone and they are not your mission.”

“My mission is Derek Hale,” he recited. “To protect him at all costs.”

“Yes. You must remember that she is not your mission.”

“Who?” Stiles asked.

The old woman smiled kindly. “Me.”

Stiles flailed back, unsure if he heard correctly. He looked to his team, who seemed just as shocked.

“You will be going back to a time before I was Grand Oracle, before I was even High Priestess, or Seer, or Banshee. You will meet me as I once was, a young girl with no idea the grandeur of the world. You will meet me as Lydia. And you must remember you cannot save me, even if I am to die. I am not your mission.”

The Oracle. Stiles would be meeting the Oracle when she was just a child. She was right. Stiles already wanted to spend his time protecting her. But it was also true that her timeline was locked. The events that turned her into Grand Oracle could not be changed, including what happened to her so, so long ago.

“I understand,” Stiles said, nodding his head.

The Oracle nodded in return. “Come,” she said, gesturing him forward. “This is a difficult mission and I part with you a gift to help you.”

Stiles kneeled before the Oracle’s feet. She leaned forward and pressed two fingers against his forehead. Suddenly a flash of imagery like a dream or a memory flooded his mind. A boy, coughing, flame all around him. He was dying. Stiles gasped, blinking in reality.

“To help you with your mission,” the Oracle said. “I cannot part with you my own power, but I can give you part. The largest obstacle you face is his death. Now you will always know when it would come.”

Stiles blinked back the image of the boy burning. “Thank you,” he said sadly.

“Spark Stiles,” she said kindly, gesturing him to his feet, “I part you with well wishes. I will know you well.”

Stiles bowed again and left, giving his team a silent goodbye. The mission was accepted. He couldn’t speak with them again to prevent knowledge he wasn’t supposed to know from transferring. He would never be back to his own time.

Stiles took his timepiece and his travel kit and left.

At age 24 Stiles is young, but well trained. First Stiles does surveillance. He goes back, discovers the source of arson, a woman named Kate Argent who seduced the boy. He goes back, tries to separate the two. He goes back, tries to prevent Kate from coming to Beacon Hills, the boy’s home town. He goes back, tries to kill Kate Argent. Stiles begins to realize that changing the path set in the past is more difficult than his training led him to believe. Stiles realizes that all his actions weren’t to protect Derek Hale, but the whole Hale family. Stiles realizes some of those deaths can’t be saved.

Laura Hale, Derek’s older sister and ride to school, is on the student council.

Stiles goes back, finds the student council schedule, and changes a date. On the day of the fire, there’s a morning meeting Laura can’t miss. She drags her brother to school early. Neither of them die. As he watches Derek complain that his sister is too nerdy and that he shouldn’t be forced to wake up early for her meeting, Stiles is hit with another vision.

Derek looks different. Older, broader, sharper cheekbones and thicker muscles. He looks scared, standing over the wounded form of an older Laura as a rogue werewolf with glaring blue eyes lunges, feral and wild and vicious. Derek Hale is torn apart, screaming: Run, Laura, Run!

Stiles gasps, shakes his head, comes back to reality where a cop car pulls up to school, searching for the two orphans to tell them of their fate.

Stiles jumps to when Derek is 22. He looks broken and hurt. Stiles begins to wonder if the torment Derek lives with is worth it. But his mission is clear. Laura and Derek have moved to New York and Stiles searches for a way to keep Derek there instead of heading back to Beacon Hills with his sister. It takes a while to orchestrate, but Stiles manages to get the Hale siblings just the right neighbor.

The day before Laura finds a paper showing a deer and the revenge spiral carved into its side, their neighbor has a seizure. Derek finds him on the floor, his daughter wailing. He brings them to the hospital and the neighbor asks Derek to take care of his daughter for a few days while they hold him for tests. Please, it’s an emergency. Her mother is in Iran and she’s only five.

Derek stays behind, leaving a few days later when the neighbor can take his daughter back.

Derek boards a plane home and Stiles faints at the sight of Derek dying, black blood spilling from his mouth, a bullet wound in his arm, delirious and alone.

Stiles follows Derek back to Beacon Hills and all the other dangers become apparent.   A rogue alpha. A freshly turned beta who goes his first full moon and can’t control himself. Hunters. His mission is to protect Derek Hale, not just keep him alive.  He tries, but he still sees Derek get shot by the same woman he tried to keep away from the 16 year old boy. There’s too much happening all at once. Too many variables, too many dangers, too much chaos. Stiles is 25 and well trained but he can’t do this at a distance anymore. At all costs.

Stiles searches for an in, but there’s only one that works. Stiles goes back a year to when Derek’s still alive in New York. Everything’s still in place to get him in Beacon Hills after Laura.

Stiles finds the newly elected Sheriff who just moved from a town over. He hates having to manipulate a widower, but he adds a son to the man’s memory. Stiles uses his timepiece on a different setting, takes ten years off his own life. A teenager again, the son of the local Sheriff, and a high school freshman, Stiles only has time to wait.    

On the first day of school, Stiles runs into a short girl with perfectly curled strawberry blonde hair. Stiles falls back, gangly and awkward in his old body. The girl glares at him and Stiles catches his breath. She is breathtakingly beautiful and Stiles can see it. The Oracle.

“Watch it,” she says with disgust.

Stiles scrambles to his feet and offers his hand. “Sorry! Sorry. Stiles, Stiles Stilinski. Nice to meet you.”

She gives him a bored look, a humored flick of the eyes to his outreached hand, and flips her hair as she turns and walks away.  

He meets a boy named Scott McCall, they become friends. And for a year, Stiles lives what could be considered a normal life. He almost forgets his mission until, over the police radio, Stiles hears some joggers found half of a body in the woods. He hasn’t had a new vision, and he needs the in. So he drags Scott along to find the body of Laura Hale.

He feels bad leading his friend into a trap, but the only way to know Derek and be a part of his life is to be friends with the boy who turns. Had Stiles never shown up, Scott would have wandered into the woods that night by himself. Without Stiles he would have been finding a place to get high, haven given up on lacrosse freshman year.  

Scott turns. Stiles meet’s Derek Hale.

He doesn’t expect it to be what it is: awkward, aggressive, angry. He did this, Stiles thought. He broke Derek. Sure, he was alive, but he was broken because he lost his family in the fire, his sister just days before.

“This is private property,” Derek says.

“Sorry, man, we didn’t know.”

He does get distracted though, by his new life. Scott and his love for Allison. Lydia, the Oracle, and her rocky relationship with Jackson. His father’s drinking. The alpha is still out there, too. The rogue that killed Laura. And Stiles finds that he needs to protect himself. He tries too hard to protect his friends.

When Derek is shot by Kate Argent, Stiles is there. Scott gets back just in time. Derek survives. Stiles sees Derek in a jail cell, shot again by Kate Argent. So, when Derek becomes a fugitive, Stiles invites him to hide in his house. Then Stiles sees Derek attacked by the alpha, a man with scars on his face.

Stiles gets the help of his friend Danny to find the alpha and is there with Derek when Peter attacks. When the fight is over, Stiles sees Derek, chained to a fence in a basement, electrocuted to death. But Derek splits and Stiles can’t protect him if he can’t find him.

At the dance, with Lydia, he’s unable to stop her from being bitten, and when facing Peter he remembers the Oracle’s words. He can’t spend his time protecting her. He has to protect Derek. And right now Derek is missing and he has to go with Peter to find him.

As Stiles is hacking into Scott’s computer (signing in; username and password both ALLISON), the vision of Derek, dying by Kate’s hand, chained up and electrocuted, is replaced by Peter’s claws. When Peter offers him the bite, he half wants it, thinks that maybe, being stronger physically, he could better protect Derek. But he can’t risk it.

Stiles does everything he can that night to get back to Derek, making Molotov cocktails to throw at Peter and helping Derek become alpha. As Derek looks back with red eyes, Stiles nearly faints with the power of his next vision: Derek drowning.   He’s given no context. He can’t jump into the future to discover what happens. The future is new and yet to be formed and now Stiles is a part of Derek's timeline. He’s changed too much. The only thing for certain is that Lydia becomes the Oracle. In all time lines, as proven by the other Seers, she becomes the Oracle and the agency is formed. Nothing else is sure.

So Stiles has to protect Derek. He stays by his side as best he can but it gets harder as Derek surrounds himself with a new pack. Stiles can’t help but feel hurt that he was never offered to be a part of it. Sure, Derek and Scott had their issues, but still. Stiles had been _trying_ so hard to make Derek his friend, be his confidant, someone the werewolf could trust because he _can_ trust him.

When Derek pushes Stiles back from the kanima, Derek gets hit, paralyzed, and falls into the pool. Without a second thought Stiles jumps in after him. It’s the hardest choice, to drop Derek. But he can’t hold up the werewolf much longer and he _needs_ to call Scott for help.   And then Derek says that Stiles is only keeping Derek alive because Stiles needs his help. And it hurts, because it’s true. Stiles may not know what importance Derek Hale is to the future, but that importance is why Stiles is there at all. But, at the same time, Stiles feels something clench in his chest, heavier than the tired muscles holding the larger man. Derek may not trust Stiles, but Stiles can’t see Derek hurt again.

So he drops him in the water, and makes a call, and dives again to lift him back up. Stiles almost accepts failure. He’s going to drown and Derek with him, but then Scott comes and saves them both.

In wet clothes, Stiles drives home, resolving to be stronger. He has to be stronger.

On the way home, he has to pull over, his sight whiting out and giving way to a vision. The kanima, slashing his throat as Gerard stands by, coughing up black blood. Stiles holds back a panic attack on the side of the road in the middle of the night. He’s a teenager again and his team is a million years away and he’s alone and he has so much riding on his shoulders. He has to save Derek Hale. He has to protect him. At all costs. All costs.

Stiles repeats this to himself when, weeks later, he’s being beaten up in the Argent basement. He can’t give Derek’s position away. If Gerard is never near Derek that vision can’t come true. It can’t.

Eventually he’s released and he goes home and feels defeated. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, he doesn’t know how to help. He doesn’t know anything. He truly feels like the teenager his body has become. Then Lydia comes over, looking for Jackson, and he snaps at her because he can’t do anything to save her. She has to live through her torments but she wants to throw herself into danger. She wants to risk her life. She’s the Oracle, god damnit! She’s the Oracle and she doesn’t understand, she could _die_ or worse. Seers can be wrong. She could find herself in the one timeline where she doesn’t live, where she never comes into her powers, where the agency never exists.

When she leaves, Stiles begins to wonder if maybe that time line wouldn’t be so bad. He doesn’t know. Then his surrogate father comes in. If Stiles didn’t feel guilty before for the fierce, protective love the Sheriff had displayed upon seeing Stiles beaten up, then the way he called Stiles a hero sure clenched it. He was manipulating this man. And Stiles was no hero.

Stiles crashes his Jeep through a warehouse wall and straight into Jackson Whittemore. At all costs, right? He stops the kanima from killing Derek with that move, although Gerard still manages to get Derek paralyzed. Jokes on Gerard, because Scott had been poisoning him for weeks. Stiles just wished he had been in on that plan.

When the dust settles and the warring parties put down their weapons and retract their claws and Jackson is saved by the grace of the Oracle’s love, Stiles gives Derek one last look before climbing back into the beat up Jeep and driving home. As he’s about to crawl into bed, Stiles has another vision, another death. This man was meant to die, Stiles thinks. He was supposed to perish in a house fire and the world is just trying again and again to correct the mistake. This man is supposed to die.

That night, Stiles cries himself to sleep.


	2. Beginning: Promises, Promises

Stiles stood around Derek’s living room table, bitter to the idea of everything that was happening. It was like some kind of make shift war room with ill-founded battle plans. Stiles may be in the body of a 16 year old but he was 26 and older than Derek and trained in strategy. But his Mission couldn’t see past the lanky façade. Stiles was nothing more than the annoying kid who stuck around.

“What are you going to do,” Stiles snarked, “punch through the wall?” Derek showed him up by punching his hand, of course. Their relationship was going more and more in that manner. Stiles would snark, try to prove himself, puff his chest and bite with wit instead of teeth, but it always came back around and turned sour. Stiles was starting to feel as if everything was a waste. How many times could he go back and change the course of time to save Derek Hale’s life? How many times must he die?

Stiles sighed, upset at himself as Derek and Scott left the loft. He knew he shouldn’t be so upset. Derek’s next death happened in the sunlight, Stiles remembered as much. It wasn’t tonight. He would survive. But Stiles couldn’t help but think everything was wrong.

This world was dark, so dark. Earth as he knew it was no utopia, but it was a far cry from the acts of revenge and murder that kept happening in Beacon Hills.

Stiles kept looking over everything, pestering Peter. Just because Derek wasn’t going to die that night didn’t mean Stiles didn’t still have to do his all to protect him. When they discover the whole thing is a trap and the betas locked in the vault are moon starved, Stiles does more than worry. He can’t do anything more in that moment than call Scott and hope they all come back in one piece. Stiles bites at his thumb, worried over Derek and over Scott and Boyd. He’d grown attached to these people, even the new ones in his life like Boyd and Erica, even Isaac. He didn’t want any of them hurt, even if they weren’t his mission.

Then, as luck would have it, Lydia calls. Stiles always struggles with the duality of his loyalties. His mission is his life’s purpose, but Lydia is the Oracle. There will always be a part of him that responds to a part of her. Some, because she is the being by which his life and time and community was shaped, and some in the simple fact that she shared her powers with him. They were connected.

There’s a dead body at the pool.

Derek gets trapped in the school basement with two feral werewolves and Stiles can only hope his visions haven’t failed him. Derek walks out in the morning, exhausted but otherwise intact. Stiles can’t help but feel as if he’s still somehow failed.

Stiles has another vision. Something’s changed and he wasn’t sure when but Derek must die sooner than previously perceived. Stiles sees Derek fall, bloody, into a pile of concrete. He doesn’t have time to stop the underground battle between the Alphas and the Hale pack. Scott can’t heal on the band bus and Stiles spends the entire time thinking of a way to save Derek, too distracted to save his friend, and Scott bleeds out.

Stiles goes back. He’s careful not to get caught, but he makes sure the Argents know about the show down. He hopes it works. Scott still can’t heal, still keeps saying that Derek is dead, but Derek must have sustained less injuries before the fall this time because Stiles has a new vision. Or, an old one. Derek dying in the sunlight. Stiles can at least spend some time worrying about Scott and help him through this episode. He doesn’t expect the motel of murder, but he deals with that, too.

When Stiles gets back to Beacon Hills, no word from Derek, he goes to the loft searching for him.

“Derek?” he called out. His voice echoed back to him in the empty loft. Then, soft foot prints padded across the upstairs. A door squeaked open and Derek called down the spiral staircase. “Just making sure you were alright,” Stiles called back.

Derek came downstairs in a pair of jeans and a tank and Stiles tried not to let his eyes linger on the muscled frame. “I’m fine,” Derek huffed, crossing his arms. “Is there anything else?”

There was something off about the look in Derek’s eyes, enchanted. Stiles knew druidic magic. He cursed inwardly, not knowing who the Darach was. Not only was someone killing people throughout the town, but they had taken his ward. Stiles felt a jealous rage for a moment before vowing to correct this but he couldn’t time jump until he knew what he needed to change.

“No,” Stiles said, sadly shaking his head. He stood there for a moment too long, his eyes locked with Derek’s, before leaving.

It was barely a day later when Stiles stood by, seeing Boyd die on Derek’s claws. Derek was so raw and broken Stiles felt compelled to do something, anything. He placed a hand on Derek’s shoulder in solidarity, in comfort, giving anything Derek would be willing to take. Boyd’s bloody body was resting in three inches of water. The loft was trashed, the Alphas had fled, and everyone was in shocked silence. Derek shook under Stiles’s hand.

Stiles remembered the time, in his jeep, when he had put a hand on Derek’s arm. He remembered the way Derek glared at it and at him until he let go. Now Derek just crumbled under the touch.

“This is wrong,” Stiles whispered. He hadn’t been doing his job. In no universe could this be considered protecting Derek. “This is all wrong.” With his heart in his throat, speeding triple time, Stiles dropped his hand and came around Derek, crouching between the alpha and the dead beta. “I’ll fix this,” he promised, trying to get Derek to look him in the eye.

Stiles didn’t hesitate to place his hand on the alpha’s cheek. Derek snapped his eyes to him, lost and confused as Stiles ran his thumb over Derek’s cheek. He didn’t flinch from the touch, though. Stiles counted that for something.

“Stiles?” Scott asked from the other side of the room. He could hear the skittish English teacher talking to Isaac and inching closer. They were all looking at him and Derek, at Boyd’s body in the center of the room.

“I’ll fix this,” Stiles repeated, reaching his hand back against Derek’s neck and resting their foreheads together. “I promise.”

He couldn’t let the way Derek was looking at him stand. He couldn’t let Derek be this broken.

Stiles stood up and stepped away from all of them, twisting his timepiece and letting his spark fuel the spell work.

“Stiles?” he heard Derek say, alert and worried.

Then Stiles was blinking to a new setting. Boyd and Erica, chained up in the Argent’s basements being electrocuted. His fingers were inches away from trying to untie them. He had tried, the first time he found himself down here, but he didn’t have the means to get them out.

Stiles took a step back and looked Erica in the eyes. “Don’t run away,” he told them. “I know you don’t trust what I say, but please, when you get out of here, don’t run away like you planned on. It will end in your deaths.”

Erica looked angry and indignant through the pain she was suffering. Stiles could hear footsteps upstairs. He had a split second to make a decision. It was against protocol, but what did protocol mean when his mission statement was: At All Costs. He wouldn’t tell them how he knew, only what he did know.

“Look,” Stiles said, making sure to catch Boyd’s eye too. “Gerard is about to come downstairs, ask me to give up Derek’s location because you two as his betas can’t. He’s going to beat the shit out of me when I don’t cooperate. He’ll take off. Chris Argent, appalled by what his father has done to Allison, will come down and set you free. When that happens, please, _please,_ don’t go into the woods. Go to the vets. Deaton can protect you for the night.” The door to the basement opened and Gerard’s snide words already started. Stiles hurried under his breath to finish his instructions. “Tell him that Deucalion is back. If he asks where you got this info, say a spark. You got that? A Spark.”

“It’s useless,” Gerard’s sniveled, pulling Stiles away from the betas. He continued his tangent and Stiles refused his questions. As he laid on the floor being beaten up, Stiles looked to Erica. “Promise me,” Stiles spit out with a kick to his ribs. “Catwoman.”

Her eyes were wide and crying and Stiles could see the slightest hint of a nod through the electric shocks. Stiles hoped it was enough.

When Gerard was finished with him, the same thing happened as before. Stiles was dragged out of the basement by the goons, thrown into the SUV, and thrown out of the car as it idled a block away from his house. Stiles made his way to his makeshift home, formulating the next step of his plan.

Stiles went through the same dance with his faux father. It was just some kids from the other team, he says. Just some kids.

Instead of wallowing in misery like last time, he goes over the night’s events and figures out the crucial change he has to make. He has to make it. To protect Derek.

When Lydia comes over, he agrees with her straight away. “I know where to go,” he says. “It’s going to be dangerous and you _cannot_ ,” he stresses, “cannot get yourself hurt. Stay in the jeep until you can save Jackson. Promise me that.”

Lydia nods a little dumbfounded. As Stiles leads her to the Jeep, he calls out to his father, “Helping Lydia fix things with her ex-boyfriend. Be back later!”

He leaves before his dad can say anything.

They crash through the wall, disrupting the start of the fight. Didn’t hit Jackson this time, too early. In the chaos, Stiles reminds Lydia to stay put before climbing out of his car and finding the one person he really needs: Chris Argent.

Crouched behind some heavy machinery and keeping a distant eye on Allison fighting Isaac, Chris shakes his head. “No, absolutely not. I’m not having you end up hurting yourself or someone on accident.”

“My dad’s the Sheriff,” he reminds the hunter. “You really think I don’t know how to shoot?”

Chris crosses his arms, taking his eyes off the fight for a brief second to stare coldly at Stiles. “And why do you need to shoot?”

“Because I’m the only one who will kill your father.”

Chris paled. “ _No one_ is getting killed on my watch.”

Stiles shook his head. “If Gerard has his way, he’ll use Derek’s bite to cure his cancer, he’ll be riddled sick because Scott’s been poisoning him with mountain ash. Might as well just kill him now.”

“No, Stiles.” Chris continued to disregard his plan and Stiles rolled his eyes.

“I don’t have time for this,” he muttered before reaching out putting Chris to sleep. He could feel the drain in his energy from having jumped so recently, but he had to. It would only last a minute, anyway.

Stiles took Chris’s gun and marched over to where everyone had circled. Derek was on his knees, teeth bared as Gerard lowered his arm between the werewolf’s jaw. Stiles took his aim and shot. Gerard fell with a satisfying thud, Derek falling back next to him, alive but still numb. Allison screamed.

Suddenly Stiles was being pushed back by a painful force in his shoulder. He looked down, stunned. An arrow protruded from his shoulder. Allison had shot him for killing her grandfather.

There was screaming chaos. Allison looked terrified by her own hands. She was crying as Scott took her weapons from her and wrapped her in his arms. Jackson, lost without a master, was lost and confused. Lydia saved him, a mirror from the time before.

Stiles had fallen to the floor and Chris was by his side, pulling out the arrow. Everything hurt, and then everything didn’t. Stiles looked to see Derek, black veins crawling up his arm. He was taking the pain away.

“That was stupid,” Derek said. “I heard what you said about Gerard and the mountain ash. It would have crippled him.”

Stiles nodded weakly. He was drained from both the magic and the wound.

“Then why did you do it,” Derek insisted, his forehead pinched together.

Stiles reached up with his good arm and lightly touched his fingers to Derek’s stubbled chin before dropping it. “You shouldn’t be used like that,” Stiles said. “I couldn’t let that happen anymore.”

Stiles started drifting, murmmering that he was okay, he just needed to rest. He wondered if he was going about this all wrong. At the beginning of his mission, he had saved Derek’s life, but there was so much more he could have protected Derek from.

The thought would have to wait for another day.

When Stiles wakes up, he’s in his own room, shoulder properly tended to, and a surly werewolf lurking in the corner.

“Derek!?” Stiles yelps, startled.

The werewolf growls in frustration and walks over to the bedside. “Don’t get up, you’re hurt.”

The corner of Stiles’s lip twitches, wanting to smile. “What are you doing here?”

Derek shrugged. He looked out the window, seeming uncomfortable. “Deaton called me this morning,” he said. “Boyd and Erica had stayed with him last night and apparently you already know about the Alpha Pack circling us.” Stiles nodded, waiting for Derek to actually answer his question.  “I wanted to thank you,” Derek said. He looked grumpier by the second. “And I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Stiles felt touched. He rolled his shoulder, gritting his teeth. “It’s not so bad. Doesn’t feel any worse than when Jackson makes me target practice during lacrosse,” he joked.

Derek shook his head. “You _shot_ someone, Stiles. You _killed_ someone. You don’t just…” Derek flexed his finger and balled them back into a fist. “If you need to talk to someone about that.” Derek shrugged again, as if that were all the words he could spare for his offer.

“Thanks,” Stiles said, fondness creeping into his voice. Something funny fluttered in his chest and Stiles bit his lip to stamp it down. Now wasn’t the time for distractions. “Now what are we going to do about the Alphas?”

“Me,” Derek said, stepping back and heading to the window. “Not we.”

Stiles shook his head. “I’m a part of this, whether you’re willing to admit it or not.”

Derek sighed. “I don’t want you getting hurt like this again.”

This time, Stiles really did smile. “Same to you.”

The look of shock on Derek’s face brought back that strange flutter in Stiles’s chest. The wolf’s blue-hazel eyes were searching for something. They stayed in that moment for a breath or two or three. Stiles had no idea if Derek found his answer before he broke eye contact and swung out the window.

Life in Beacon Hills was looking a little brighter.  Derek was safe. His pack was safe. Boyd and Erica were still afraid of all the crap going on in town, but they were alive and okay. His shoulder hurt, but it would pass. His dad hadn’t found out about anything yet.

The next time Stiles ran into Boyd, he was surprised to find the newfound solidarity between them. There was a cautious trust from the beta that hadn’t existed before.

“What does it mean?” Boyd asked, Erica looking over his shoulder.

Stiles just shrugged. “I grew up with more secrets than you originally thought.” He managed to convince both Boyd and Erica to stay with Derek. The Argents were gone, the living members left for France, and Derek needed help to stand up to the Alphas.

“I know what they can do,” he told Boyd. “I’ve seen it firsthand. We need to be a united front.”

“I’m not sure I trust you, Stilinski,” Boyd said. “But I saw you change. When we were tied up in the Argent basement. You were frantically coming to help us and then you blinked and you were still _you_ but...” Boyd trailed off, shaking his head. “I believe you about those secrets. Everything happened like you said. I may not trust _you_ , but I trust you know what could happen.”

Boyd held out his hand and Stiles enthusiastically shook it. Erica smirked and flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Okay, Batman. But you have to let me in just _a little bit_ about your hocus pocus.” She pulled Stiles into her that was less of a hug and more of a trap. Stiles winced at the wound in his shoulder. “And don’t do anything stupid like getting yourself shot again,” Erica said, letting him go. “I know how much of a bitch that hurts.”

Stiles promised he wouldn’t get shot if he could help it.

“You’re a brave one, Stilinski,” Erica said, planting a bright red kiss on his cheek. “I’m glad you have our backs.”

Erica then wrapped her arm around Boyd’s, grinning up at the boy stupidly. “Come on, let’s make Derek buy us Chinese food. He owes us for the shit storm he put us through.” The way Boyd looked down at the blonde made Stiles smile. He hopes beyond hope they get a chance to flourish.

 

 


	3. Middle: Giving Up

Stiles collapsed into his bathroom shower, naked and bleeding, tearing down the curtain with his fall. He gasped at the sudden change in surroundings and the hot water against the claw marks on his side. He pressed his hand against the bleeding and scrambled out of the tub, his feet getting tangled in the shower curtain. Under the sink was a bin of medical supplies. Wide eyed and harried, Stiles pulled a towel off the rack and pressed it to his side before digging out the hydrogen peroxide, Neosporin, and gauze.

It wasn’t too deep, Stiles thought. He could live without stiches, although they would be nice. He wasn’t sure when exactly he was. He just jumped back a month, his fingers shaking as Peter tried to gut him. No internal organs punctured, thankfully.

This was turning into the longest year.

Stiles bandaged his side and pulled himself up to standing and turned off the water that was starting to get everywhere. The shower curtain needed to be replaced. “Ah, fuck,” he muttered. “Put it on the to-do list, I guess.”

“STILES?”

He froze, turning to the door too late to lock it. Why the hell was it unlocked when he was taking a shower? Past him was an idiot. The door opened and Derek stood there, frozen mid step, his mouth open with a word lost in his throat. Stiles felt a blush crawling up chest and neck and cheeks as he grabbed for the other towel off the rack and quickly covered himself.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Stiles snapped. “This is the _bathroom_.”

A hint of pink tinted Derek’s cheeks under the mask of suntan and stubble. “I smelled blood.” His eyes caught sight of the fresh bandage, gauze spotting bright red. Derek’s eyes roamed Stiles’s body, brow knitting in that familiar confused look Stiles was growing overly fond of. “What happened?” Derek asked, insistent as he stepped forward and placed a hand on Stiles’s bare side just above the bandage. He zapped some pain, eyes straying to the knot of scarred tissue on his left shoulder, the raised line under his right collarbone, the fading burn mark just over his heart, the white dots on his upper arm in a clear teeth pattern. “Jesus, Stiles. What happened? When did..?”

There are a few key things about time travel. If he goes back in time to where he previously lived, he will return in that moment, the other him vanishing from the timeline. Any life experiences experienced before the jump stays with him: memories, injuries, etc. Stiles was covered in a myriad of battle scars from fights that never happened. His timepiece kept count, but he didn’t know how many times he jumped, trying to keep on top of things. Trying to protect Derek.

It took Stiles about eight tries before they managed to get through the Alpha pack without serious harm. Finally he stopped them before they ever reached Beacon Hills, preventing the Darach from coming back as well. Stiles finally got a respite before Kate Argent returned and Peter betrayed them. But their pack was seven strong, plus Stiles, Lydia, and Allison. He’d figure this one out, too.   

“It’s nothing,” Stiles said, pushing past Derek. He stumbled a bit at a surge of pain, but he glared when Derek tried to help him. “It’s nothing.” Stiles made his way to his bedroom and scrounged for a pair of boxers. He pulled some on before dropping the towel and finding a shirt. “What are you doing here, anyway?” Stiles asked. He looked over and Derek had looked away, looking worried and pensive. Stiles didn’t remember this. He never got out of the shower to find Derek at his house. He glanced at the calendar on the wall and the bullet points of events on the day before it. This never happened.

Maybe Derek had shown up, but left because Stiles was showering. Stiles didn’t like this. He didn’t know where it was going.

“I, uh. Cora sent me.”

Stiles raised an eyebrow to that as he tugged a shirt over his head. “Cora, huh?” There had been a lot more bonding between them in this line. It was good. It was healing. Stiles felt the pack did double duty: keeping Derek happy and creating more people to help Stiles protect Derek. Cora was a great asset on both fronts.

Stiles looked back to the calendar and tried to remember what happened today and tomorrow.

“She wanted me to talk to you about something. And Erica was there and we all know she can’t keep a secret to save her life.”

“She could keep a secret to save somebody else’s,” Stiles said, thinking of the time(s) in Gerard’s basement.

“But not yours.”

Stiles snapped around at that, a pair of jeans held loosely in his fingers. “What do you mean?”

Stiles caught sight of the print outs on his desk. That’s right, he was researching berserkers. Tonight Kate would attack and in the first time around, Derek would be kidnapped. Stiles fixed that already, although he supposed he would have to do that again. He didn’t realize he had gone so far back.

Derek took a step closer, a sad look fighting through the hard look he was going for. “Stiles, how did you get that?” He nodded to Stiles’s side. The words were so kind and cautious. “How did you get _any_ of those scars? You’ve never been hurt more than a bruising, but I saw bites and claws and-”

“Derek, please drop it.”

“ _Stiles_.”

He took a deep breath, exhaling sharply. “Right,” Stiles huffed. He pulled on his pants with a pained wince and went about organizing his things for the day. “I’m not doing this.”

“Erica seems to think you’re some kind of prophet, but that doesn’t explain… Cora said you knew exactly where to find her, you were waiting for her and dodged the Alphas like you had done it before.”

“Maybe I have.”

“Stiles, that kind of magic is dangerous. Does Deaton know you’re handling with that kind of stuff?”

Stiles ran a tired hand over his face. He had no idea Derek was putting the pieces together so early. Derek had asked him something similar yesterday… a month or so from now. He can’t handle this right now.

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Stiles you’re just a kid.”

“I’m 27,” he spat. His timepiece had alerted him of another 365.25 days worth of life lived just a few weeks ago. “I’ve been doing this for a long time.” It felt good to say out loud. “I made a promise to you that you don’t remember, but-”

“That I don’t remember? Stiles.” Derek reached out and grabbed his wrist. “Stiles, don’t. Whatever magic you’re playing with, I don’t want to be forgetting things. Not about…” he trailed off, the blush returning to his cheeks. “Don’t make me forget things.”

“I can’t deal with this,” Stiles said, wanting to throw himself at Derek, wanting to wrap his arms around the werewolf and breathe in his scent and just take a moment where he’s not lying. Instead, he frees his arm and touches the skin just before the crease of his wrist and the back of his hand.

 

Stiles nearly faints at the expulsion of energy when he finds himself standing naked in front of his shower. The curtain is on right and the cabinet is closed and the towels are clean and neatly on the rack. Stiles sighed. His side was already starting to scab over. He rebandaged it to keep any blood from scenting too loudly. There wasn’t any spilled on the floor like last time. The scent shouldn’t be worse than had he nicked himself shaving. Derek may have his suspicions, but if Stiles took his shower, he would continue the day as normal with none of that. His heart ached thinking of the way Derek looked at him.

There had to be a way to fix things, Stiles thought. Kate couldn’t win this. Peter couldn’t win this. Stiles wishes he had the time to shoot Peter after Gerard but he barely had enough time to avoid Allison’s arrow the second time around. He’d have to find another way.

Stiles had learned a lot about the world he lived in since he became the Sheriff’s son.

In every variation where they survived, Erica and Boyd develop feelings for each other. Cora had been living with a pack in Mexico, having ‘run away’ the night before the fire and returning from her hiding spot after she felt the pack ripped from her and deciding to run away for real. She ran until she couldn’t anymore and she had made it to Guadalajara. Cora and Malia are thick as thieves in the lines where they get a chance to save Malia. Stiles has a hard time not bringing it to the pack attention now that he knows she’s out there, trapped as a coyote in the woods. Scott could become a true alpha if pushed far enough. If he did, Isaac would always eventually defect to Scott’s pack. There was a Kitsune named Kira who only moved to town if the Darach started making sacrifices because her mother wanted to make sure a nogitsune stayed trapped under the nemeton. The love triangles between Scott, Kira, Allison and Scott, Isaac, Allison, play out differently almost every time. Gerard is unable to drive Allison insane if her mother lives, but that doesn’t stop her from making some key bad choices. Gerard has been ruining things in Beacon Hills long before the Hale fire. Sheriff Stilinski has a hard time accepting the supernatural any time he’s faced with it, but once he does he makes a good ally. Ditto with Melissa. Peter’s story about Paige is mostly true, some poor narration choices aside, although the time where Derek told him the story had to be rewritten. Derek will give up his alpha status to save his sister. Derek will flat out kill Jackson if given the chance early enough. He’ll hate himself for it, it’ll torture him. Stiles is deeply in love with Derek Hale.

Stiles turned off the hot water and let his head rest against the cool tile. “Fuck,” he muttered to himself. He got out and took off his soggy bandage, giving the healing wound some air. Stiles had an idea of how to change things, but for right now it had to wait. His energy was drained. He needed to rest. He closed his eyes and wished he could have given himself more time. He still had to keep Derek from being shot up and kidnapped by Kate tonight. He at least had time for a nap.

It was over a month later when Stiles’s little steps had accumulated in stopping Peter in his tracks that Derek approached him again.

“You know,” Derek said, a tight smile on his lips, “you’re always at just the right place at the right time.”

Stiles smiled back, eyes distant and heart heavy. “I try.”

Derek huffed and sat down next to him on the sidewalk. The sun was shining and Kate was dead and Peter was locked away and the pack was alive and Derek was okay. Maybe he didn’t have to change things too drastically.

“I’ve heard some interesting things about you,” Derek said, bumping shoulders with him. “Cora told me how you found her and avoided the Alpha Pack like you had done it before. And Erica was there, and she, well you know how bad she is at keeping her mouth shut. She told me about how you changed her mind about running away and trying to find another pack.”

“Is this some kind of elaborate thank you?” Stiles joked dully. He wanted to be the comic relief role he often found himself filling, but right now he was just tired.

Derek cleared his throat and put his hands on the ground behind him, bracing himself as he leaned back. “In a way,” Derek mused.  “But…” he let out a deep sigh, a not quite vocal sound of frustration, “I know you’re doing something that the rest of us don’t know about. And it makes me worry.”

Stiles looked over his shoulder. All mark of battle had been erased from the alpha’s skin, only evidence the few tears in his clothes and the blood stains. Stiles was a bit more scratched up, but nothing that even really needed a simple band aid.

“Admitting that you care? This is high praise.”

“Stiles, please,” Derek sighed again, closing his eyes to the sun.

Stiles looked away, focusing his attention on the cracks in the pavement. “Sorry.”

“I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into. Deaton says you haven’t been training with him. I just… I don’t want you to get in over your head with something.”

Stiles leaned back, mimicking Derek’s pose. When he did, their fingers brushed.   Neither pulled back. Stiles turned his head and looked at the werewolf, really looked at him. He rarely got the chance to just take a moment to breathe, unhindered by the next attack against the town and pack. Derek looked healthy and whole and almost happy, even with the lines of tension around his eye from talking to Stiles.

“I’ve always been in over my head when it comes to you,” Stiles admitted. It sounded like something out of a bad 90’s romcom, of which Stiles had seen a lot of since becoming friends with Allison and Lydia. He hadn’t meant it that way, romantically, but maybe he did. Derek turned his head to face him, their eyes locking.

Then Derek’s face was gone, replaced by a vision of an older Derek, maybe 30 or a bit younger, jumping in front of a… something with sharp claws going after… after him. After Stiles.

“Hey,” Derek says, his clear pale eyes swimming back into focus. “Where’d you go for a minute there?”

Stiles blinked. “Thinking about you.”

Derek leaned close and hovered, waiting perhaps for Stiles to pull back. He should, Stiles thought. He should pull back, but he can’t make himself move. Derek lifts his far hand and brings it to Stiles’s cheek. They breathe each other in for a handful of heartbeats before their lips touch, chapped and soft and perfect. Derek kisses him like he’s something precious and breakable. Stiles kisses back like Derek is oxygen.

Derek pulls back, looking alarmed and ashamed. “I shouldn’t have done that.” Stiles wanted to laugh, that was his line. “You’re just a kid.”

Stiles shook his head and stood up. “I’m about a thousand years younger than you and five years older,” he said with a wry smile. Stiles brushed his hands against his ripped jeans and squinted his eyes at the sky. His mission was beginning to feel less and less of a mission and more of a personal journey to protect his friends. He spent the month figuring out how to stop Peter because he needed time to recover and he wasn’t going to let Peter get the best of him again. But he also spent the month searching for a new way out of this mess.

“Stiles?” Derek hedged, standing as well.

Stiles couldn’t… wouldn’t kill any of his pack, even if doing so early enough could fix everything. He looked at Derek. The vision was so fresh. Derek dying to protect Stiles when it should be the other way around. Stiles was sure, even if it wasn’t romantically, they would grow too close to bare to see the other in harm’s way. Stiles was already at the point.

“At all costs,” Stiles whispered, his throat tensing as he choked back tears. He didn’t want to, but he had to give up Derek.

“What?”

Stiles turned to Derek, determined. “Just one more kiss, I promise.”

Before Derek could say a word, Stiles threw his arms around the other man and pulled him in tight, their mouths crashing together like a storm. It was fast and needy and heartfelt and a goodbye. When they parted, Derek stared at him in reverence, his brow creasing together. God, Stiles loved that look.

“Bye, Derek.”

“Wait, Stiles?”

But he had already pressed his fingers to his outer wrist, sending himself back, his farthest jump in a long time. If Stiles wanted to change his own actions, he had to be there to do it.

 

 


	4. End: Timepiece

Stiles rolled onto his side, gasping a bit for air. It was a long journey. Sure, not half as long as the first trip to Beacon Hills, but his energy reserves were still low. Stiles sat up in the hotel and looked at the calendar he had tacked up by the dumb sail boat painting. It was a month before the Hale fire. He had only just changed the time of Laura’s student council meeting.

Stiles took a full two weeks to just sleep and eat. Then he adjusted his timepiece and reverted his body back to its proper age. He rolled back his shoulders and stretched the muscles that felt unfamiliar. His bones groaned for days from the expedited growth. Stiles took another two weeks to recuperate from that bout of magic.

The day of the fire his sight swarmed with vision of Derek protecting his older sister. “Run, Laura, Run.”

He wanted to go back further. He wanted to kill Kate and Gerard before they could ever mess up Beacon Hills, but he had tried that before, unknowing of just how big an impact it would trickle forward. Killing Kate before she ever came to Beacon Hills would make Gerard a worse dictator among his hunters. Killing Gerard before _he_ ever came to town or before Kate was even born, would prevent the Alpha Pack from being formed, but still cause Derek’s death by the Argent hunters who grew more wild and reckless without their warped leader, Chris still too young to make them listen. It just never worked.

But Stiles could do this.

First he found Cora, stopping her from running out of the country. Derek and Laura were so relieved to have just one more family member alive. They took Cora with them to New York.

Second, Stiles got a job.

At Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital, Long Term Care Ward, Stiles stood over Peter’s bedside. “You don’t work here?” a voice asked. Stiles turned to see Melissa McCall, a slight frown to her lips. It was way past visiting hours. Stiles shook his head. He wore a pair of scrubs and had a badge on, but Stiles trusted that Melissa would know her co-workers.

“No,” Stiles said, “I work in pediatrics, but uh,” he turned to look at Peter sadly, “I knew him. Was good friends with some of his…”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, coming over and placing a comforting hand on his arm. “It was a tragic loss to the community.”

Stiles nodded. “Peter was a sarcastic asshole and I couldn’t stand him half the time,” Stiles laughed, some real emotion getting to him. “But he was a great person to have on your side.”

“Is your shift over?” Melissa asked. Stiles shook his head. His shift would never be over. “Okay, just make sure you hike it back to pediatric before your break ends. Connie is strict.”

“Thanks.”

“Melissa McCall,” she offered with an open hand.

Stiles shook it, smiling. “Stiles Ward.”

“Stiles? That’s an interesting name.”

He shrugged. It wasn’t when he came from. “Parents were hippies or something,” he said.

“See you around, Stiles.” Melissa continued on and Stiles waved goodbye.

Stiles walked over to Peter’s IV drip. “You don’t deserve to go crazy. I know it hurts,” Stiles said, “but everything will be okay. I promise.” He would do it tomorrow. He really did need to get back to pediatrics.

Pediatrics, where Isaac would be brought in with a broken arm. Stiles would report it to the authorities and stop the abuse long before he reached high school. Pediatrics, where Boyd would come in with a broken arm, but because he fell off the garage trying to get his frizbee. Stiles would introduce the boy to Scott, who Melissa had brought into work that day. Pediatrics, where Lydia would come in for a check-up and become fascinated by a PET scan machine and Stiles could sign her up for a Junior Doctor’s program. Pediatrics, where Erica would come to treat her epilepsy and Stiles would introduce her to Lydia.

And Stiles went almost a year without doing what he meant to. He visited Peter almost every week. Finally, when he thought he gave enough time for Derek to heal some in New York, Stiles killed Peter Hale, injecting poison into his IV drip. Everyone just thought he slipped out of the coma and passed away.

Laura, Derek, and Cora returned to Beacon Hills to give Peter a funeral. Among his belongings, they found a record of his daughter, adopted to the Tate family. It was enough that Laura was able to piece together that Malia had turned on the full moon and was probably still in the woods. They found her and gladly accepted their previously unknown relative in their pack, making close ties with her adoptive father. Laura decided maybe they should try rebuilding.

Without Stiles in their timeline, he could jump forward again. With Peter gone, there would be no rogue to attract the hunter’s attention. Scott would never be bit, and without the prospect of a True Alpha, the Alpha Pack would leave them alone. The Darach was waiting, growing in strength to take over the Alphas, and would follow to whatever town they were in before the eclipse, so Stiles didn’t have to worry about Jennifer.

Stiles wished he could have saved the other Hales, but he can’t protect Derek from everything.

Stiles jumped forward a year and looked around to make sure everything was alright. Then another. Then another and another. He watched the hale house go from ruin to rubble to foundation, to home in the span of days.  Stiles made a point of stopping by his old neighborhood when the new Sheriff moved to town. He helped move a few boxes, making chit chat. “Just passing through, haven’t lived here since high school. Good luck with your new job.”

Stiles kept an eye on Kate, and when it looked as if she was going to make her return, Stiles killed her and her father. He stood over them, power rushing through him as he forced their hand. He was able to fashion bite marks on his arm and her side off the teeth prints on his own body. Family would see them, the bullet through their brains from their own fingers, blood soaking their clothes where a werewolf bit them and come to the conclusion they followed through with the hunter addendum better than either of them could live up to in reality.  

Stiles was 28 and had spent 4 years on this mission and it looked as if he had finally found the world where he wasn’t really needed.

Stiles saw Derek die in what looked like a fight against hunters, but he couldn’t determine about how old he was so Stiles continued to jump years, checking up on the goings on of the Hale pack and Beacon Hills. Things were peaceful. He was glad that the family got some good years in before something tragic struck. Stiles stood between the oaks surrounding the Hale house and smiled at the recent paint job. It looked nice, lived in.

“Hey!”

Stiles jumped out of his skin, turning around.

“This is private property.”

His heart was in his throat and Stiles wanted to burst out into laughter. Some things never change. Derek looked good. He had a full beard and his eyebrows didn’t look murderous. He looked at Stiles sternly, but there was nothing hard or mean about him.

“Yeah, sorry, I was just…” Stiles shrugged. “Nice house.”

Derek looked him over, brow scrunching together. “I know you.”

Stiles felt his heart skip a beat. There was no way Derek remembered. It was impossible. “Uh, pretty sure this is the first time we’ve met.” Technically true.

Derek shook his head. “You… you’ve been here before.”

“Uh, nope.” Stiles shook his head.

“You’re lying.” Derek took a menacing step forward which was down played by his lack of scowl. “I’ve seen you around town and here. I remember, more than once, you’ve been outside the window and when I went to go say something there’d be no trace.”

“Are you okay..?” Stiles asked, hedging away.

“Derek?” and now that was Cora’s voice. He should have known the house wasn’t as empty as it looked. “What’s going on?”

Cora came up to their left and froze, eyes wide. “It’s you!”

“What?” Stiles and Derek both asked.

“The nurse!” Cora exclaimed. “You haven’t aged a day.”

Stiles held up his hands. “Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I have a photo from Melissa McCall. You used to babysit her son. We went to high school together. You’re the nurse that stopped me from running off to Mexico after the fire.” She stared at him in wonder. “Melissa said you used to visit our uncle until you stopped working there.”

Stiles nodded, knowing lying would just be heard. “Yeah, I did.”

“But how?” Derek asked. “You can’t be any older than I am.”

Stiles shrugged. “It’s a long story.”

“Well,” a new voice said, “why don’t you come in and tell it.” Laura looked beautiful all grown up.

Stiles nodded, unsure but not seeing any way out of this without jumping, but he needed more time to rest before doing that particular spell again.

Inside, settled around the living room with a strong cup of coffee, surrounded by the 3 Hale siblings, Stiles was prompted to tell his story.

“I’m from the future,” he said, watching the looks on their faces. Derek raised a skeptic eyebrow, Laura choked a little on her coffee, and Cora bounced up and down with such childlike exuberance it was hard to believe she wasn’t the little girl he found in the woods anymore but 23 and a technical engineer.

“Are you a Terminator?” Cora asked with excitement.

Stiles shook his head, amused. “No. Although that’s a pretty decent analogy.”

“So you were sent here to save me?” she asked smugly.

Stiles again shook his head, although he couldn’t keep his eyes from darting to Derek.

“You were sent here to save Derek!?” Laura exclaimed. It seemed the girls had accepted time travel with little to no pause. Stiles blushed and ducked his head.

“So that’s why I see you around all the time?” Derek asked.

Stiles shrugged, not looking up. “I should go.” Stiles put his mug down and darted to the front door. “You guys shouldn’t even know about me. It just complicates things.”

“No, wait!” Laura called out.  

Stiles sprinted out the door and down the front steps. He knew the wolves could catch him if they wanted to but he hoped they’d let him have his peace. Stiles would hole away and rest up and go back and this interaction will never have –

Something strong and painful hit Stiles with the force of a semi-truck. He blinked, his ears ringing. At the front door the siblings were in states of shock and anger, ready to fight or run. Before him, coming out of the shadows of the tree line were a group of hunters carrying guns and gleeful expressions.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Stiles said, his fingers coming away from chest sticky and red.

Almost trance like, Stiles outstretched his bloody hand and flicked it in the direction of the hunters. They were already shooting at the werewolves, Laura charging them. The hunters flew backwards, slamming into the oak trees.

Another hunter tackled him to the ground. Stiles coughed, some blood trickling past his lips. The hunter had a knife and he fought him off. Stiles screamed out as the blade cut into him, his leg, his hand, his arm. Then the weight of the hunter disappeared and Stiles heard a deep roar.

Stiles pulled down deep and connected with the energy of the forest, borrowing from the magic of the town itself. He reached out again, concentrating as best he could on the strangers. The grass grew around their feet, roots sprouting and entangling their legs and torsos and arms. They screamed. Bitter, angry words. But they were trapped.

Stiles woke up in a bed that he had never seen before. He was patched up and being watched like a hawk by a red headed woman in the corner. Stiles laughed. The Grand Oracle.

“Stiles Ward?” Lydia asked tersely.

Stiles nodded weakly and Lydia’s eyes narrowed. “Doctor Martin. Cora’s girlfriend.”

That was a new development. Stiles hadn’t gotten a chance to do his year’s reconnaissance before being found by the Hales. “Do you know about them?” he asked.

Lydia huffed. “That my girlfriend and her family are werewolves? Yes.”

“Do you know about yourself?”

Lydia looked shocked for a moment before a perfect mask covered her features. “It was how I met them. I was at home when one of my patients died, and I screamed. It was so supernaturally charged Laura had to see if everything was okay.”

Stiles gave Lydia a fond smile. “The scream is to help block out the mundane so you can hear what you need to.”

Lydia hummed but didn’t comment. She reached behind her and picked up a small dish and held it out to Stiles. “When I was stitching up your hand, I pulled this out. It looked broken but I couldn’t figure out what it was.”

Stiles saw the round microchip inscribed with tens of sigils. His heart plummeted. “Oh no. No.” He surged forward but pain ruptured through his chest and Lydia told him to keep still. Stiles cursed, his mind racing a mile a minute.

The timepiece was broken.

He could, in theory, duplicate it, but the seamless combination of technology and magic wasn’t even something people were experimenting with yet. He would have to go the old fashioned way. It would expend more energy and it would take so much more time. He would have to select his spells so carefully because some of the less refined ones left room for paradoxes and duplicates and that always spelled disaster.   The time structure couldn’t support it.

“Stiles, calm down!” Lydia ordered.

Stiles tried, but he was nearing hysterics. It was like some cruel joke. Stiles wondered if the Oracle had given this mission as a test, a game. Looking over at Lydia’s cautiously worried face, he remembered the Oracle’s parting words. She would know him well. The Oracle did see all, after all. All of his failures, all his altered time lines. She would see the path that would lead him here. Maybe he was always supposed to get stuck.

He hoped so. Looking at Lydia’s strong, beautiful brown eyes and perfectly painted lips, he really hoped so.

“What is it?” she asked, nodding to the timepiece.

“Nothing, anymore,” Stiles said.

“They told me your stupid story about being from the future,” Lydia said. “Anybody else I’d say was crazy, but I remember you, from the hospital. And Cora showed me the picture she has of you. You really haven’t changed a day.”

Then she got up and left with strict instructions to not agitate his wounds. As she left, Derek came in, taking her seat.

“You’ve really been looking after me all these years?” he asked, still skeptical. His brow pinched as he looked at Stiles.

Stiles nodded. “I’m surprised any of you believe me, to be honest.”

“I’m surprised I believe you myself. But I remember, when we came home to work out Peter’s funeral, Melissa McCall was there and she said a nursing friend would visit him all the time and that the other nurse had arranged his things for us. Which led us to Malia.”

Stiles looked away, staring out the window. “I wanted to make sure you had what family I could save. I couldn’t save them all. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”

Derek leaned forward and placed a hand on Stiles’s hand. “You’re covered in scars,” he said. “You’ve fought wolves, haven’t you?”

“And hunters, and other things you’ve only just heard of.” Stiles turned his head and his breath caught at the fond expression on Derek’s face.

“Why?” Derek asked.

“I was sent to protect you,” Stiles whispered.

“I feel like I know you, somehow,” Derek admitted, intertwining their fingers. “More than stray glimpses from afar.”

Stiles wanted to believe it was true. Maybe some impressions of past timelines were left in Derek’s mind. Impossible, but he wished it.

“You don’t,” Stiles said, holding onto Derek’s hand, “but I’d like to know you again.”

“Again?” Derek asked, his lip quirking upwards as he ducked his head.

“It’s a long story.”

Derek peeked through his eyelashes up at Stiles. The image made Stiles’s heart flutter. “I’d like to hear it sometime?” Derek asked hopefully.

Stiles lifted his other hand, showing off his bandaged hand and wrist. “I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”

“Good,” Derek said, letting go of Stiles’s hand and clearing his throat. “I’ll go get you something to eat.”

“Sounds good,” Stiles said.

Derek left with one last confused smile.


	5. Epilogue: 'Til Death

As Stiles lived with the Hales and became their official Emissary, he watched the pack expand.

Lydia had already been contemplating asking to share the supernatural with her best friend, Erica Reyes. Stiles said she’d take to werewolves like a fish to water. With Erica came her fiancé, Boyd. With Boyd came his best friend, Scott. Scott didn’t take the bite, which was for the better. Stiles was glad he had the choice, this time around, but he had never wanted it, True Alpha potential aside.

Scott was still working with Deaton, almost through vet school. Stiles would use Deaton as a resource on occasion, but sometimes Deaton asked Stiles for advice instead. Stiles kept tabs on Isaac, who had been adopted after Stiles intervened. He was living well in another state now.

Lydia grew more and more into her powers as they days passed. The world would change and the supernatural would become a new standard of natural and she would fulfil her destiny one day as Oracle. Stiles had no doubt.

And most importantly, Derek was safe and Derek was happy.

Stiles never thought he would get a chance to have this when he first fell in love with Derek. It wasn’t perfect. There were still threats on occasion, although nothing as drastic as the old reality Stiles had lived through. Sometimes they just fought among themselves. It wasn’t perfect, but it was wonderful.  

When Stiles had found himself without his timepiece he first was afraid, because he might not have any more chances to protect Derek. But, as the door closed behind Derek, Stiles had a vision.

Derek was old, liver spots coloring his skin, only a spattering of pigment left in his silver hair. He had wrinkles carved deep into his skin, laugh lines still tugging at his smile. He laid in bed looking fondly over at the picture frame on the corner table. Stiles recognized an older self, holding hands with the man in the bed. They looked happy.

A young woman with black hair sat at the foot of the bed sadly. A mature but still youthful Lydia stood behind the woman, a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m glad Stiles never had to see me die again,” the elderly Derek said.

“Go,” Lydia said. “Be with him.”

“Seer Martin,” Derek smiled a goodbye and sighed and closed his eyes and breathed no more.

Stiles had come back to the present with a tear trailing down his cheek and a hope in his heart he hadn’t felt before. He had done it, he thought. He had done it.

Every kiss with Derek was in reverence. Stiles knew, above all else, they finally had the time to be together.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading.
> 
> [FIND ME ON TUMBLR](http://www.inthearmsofathief.tumblr.com)
> 
> Also! I'm made a webseries about werewolves! [The Werewolf Diaries](http://www.youtube.com/c/amyberserk)


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